On Tuesday 27 September 2005 04:27 pm, Josh Paetzel wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 September 2005 16:08, greg wm wrote:
> > hi,
> >
> > how can i best protect whatever bandwidth is needed by our skype
> > connections?
> >
> > skype works great usually.  probably where it breaks down is when
> > other activity loads down our connection.
> >
> > is there any fairly easy way to address this?  if it's too
> > complicated i suppose i may have to just punt and get a second
> > connection.  but even that would require some serious setup, in
> > order to divert the skype connections.
> >
> > i had an experience a year ago or so where i noticed that under
> > heavy (down)load, ping turnaround could take upto nearly 15
> > seconds.  i interpreted that to mean the pings were waiting in a
> > crowded packet queue.  i imagine these sorts of considerations
> > could indeed make voip bandwidth protection a thorny issue.
> >
> > one supposedly simple idea that comes to mind is to somehow
> > throttle packets as necessary so that there is always some headroom
> > left in our connection bandwidth.  but i confess i wouldn't know
> > offhand how to do even that..
> >
> > i'd like to see recommendations, pointers, experiences, ...
> >
> > tia,
> > greg
> >
> > Greg Whitley Mott
> > IT Coordinator
> > NonviolentPeaceforce.org
>
> There's alway the hardware solution, which may come in a blue box with
> that neat-o golden-gate bridge emblem on it. (cisco)

Which is to say it is a software solution running on different hardware.

Traffic shaping (QoS or other methods) is your best bet. I am not familiar 
with traffic shaping using iptables, but as long as you have the basics of 
iptables down I doubt it would be that hard to setup/configure QoS into your 
iptables config. I use openbsd's packet filter (PF) for traffic shaping.

Presumably you already have some sort of firewall, maybe it already has this 
functionality built in?